


Marathon Men

by radishface



Category: NU'EST, Produce 101 (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M, OT5, Romance, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-08-13
Packaged: 2020-06-28 10:47:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19810702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/radishface/pseuds/radishface
Summary: It’s 2019, and things have never been better for Nu’est. Cautiously, gradually, inevitably, Jonghyun and Minhyun find their way back to each other—and with the help of the others who love them, to happily ever after.Sequel to Scientific Methods: Double Blind.





	1. Hwang Sujin

  
Sujin’s voice crackles, exasperated, over the speakerphone. “It’ll go fine,” she says. “You don’t need to worry so much.”

All morning, from one end of the house to another, her little brother has been pacing, playing it out in his head. There’s no cause to be nervous. At this point Minhyun has probably rehearsed everything in his head. But still.

“At two,” Minhyun says, this time the first time aloud. “I’m picking him up from the train station. And then we’ll come home. And then after dinner, we’re going to leave.”

“Did the new furniture arrive? I ordered you the cabinets.”

“Still in the boxes. Gosh, Sujin, this house is a mess.”

Sujin sighs. “Seriously? You left before the sun even rose. What the hell have you been doing?”

“I don’t know. I probably should have come back earlier...”

“No, it’s just that you’ve got high expectations. But you know Jonghyun’s not going to care at all about how messy the place is.”

“But _I_ care.” Said petulantly. Sujin rolls her eyes, not that Minhyun can see her.

“Well, that’s your own burden to bear. You wanted to be a perfectionist about this and look where it’s gotten you. It’s too bad Dongho isn’t coming, otherwise he’d be able to help you set up all that stuff in a jiffy. Only thing his muscles are good for.”

This, at least, gets a chuckle out of a nervous Minhyun.

“Mom’s been cooking up a storm, waiting for you two. It’s your favorites, and Jonghyun’s favorites too. Sujebi and fish cake kimbap and all that good stuff.”

“Sounds nice.”

“’Course it’s nice. It’s mom. Look, I gotta run. Gotta help in the kitchen. Seriously, why aren't you here to prepare your own debut? Later, loser.”

“Okay,” Minhyun says absently, probably already distracted with something else in the house. Sujin hangs up.

 _His debut_. That’s one way to think about it. Sujin wipes the hand that’s been holding the phone on her pants leg.

“Sujin-ah!” Her mother calls from downstairs.

“I’m coming!”

She runs downstairs. Freshly blanched spinach is draining in the sink, and she rolls up her sleeves. Her dad’s already mixed the seasonings. Wow, even dad is helping out with the cooking. Like always, Minhyun is visiting from Seoul and bringing Jonghyun with him. But this time it’s different, and even if they don’t know what’s up exactly—they can feel it.

She casts a sidelong eye at her dad. He’s focused on the task at hand—slicing pickles into ever-thinner pieces. His hands move slowly, carefully, the knife going through the stained radish like it’s nothing.

“I think that’s enough, dad.” Sujin says, before he can chop up the entire root. “It’s just Minhyun and Jonghyun, not the entire reserve forces.”

“Right,” her dad says, setting the knife down. He laughs a little at himself. “But in this kind of situation, it’s always better to have a little extra food on hand.”

Sujin tilts her head.

“In case nobody knows what to say,” her dad says. “Then at least you can eat.” 


	2. Hwang Minhyun

Jonghyun didn’t invite me—or any of us, actually—to his house, not once. “There’s nothing much to see in Gangwon-do,” he used to say in a small voice.

We had been training for nearly half a year when I invited him to Busan to stay for a week. We had a week of holiday before training resumed. Minki opted to stay behind in Seoul with Aaron, and Dongho returned to Jeju. My parents had extended the invitation to Jonghyun through me, and I knew they wanted to be as hospitable to him in return for his leadership. I had told them enough stories about the members, and perhaps my accounts had skewed in quantity toward Jonghyun. It was entirely possible.

My parents came to pick us up from the train station. They were normal enough, asking innocuous questions—where were his parents from, had he always lived in Gangwon-do, what kind of subjects did he like in school, was I well-behaved and giving the group any trouble? Of course I was well-behaved, especially if you compared me with Dongho and Minki and Aaron, but this line of questioning wasn’t what made me vaguely nervous.

I had had friends over in middle school and elementary school, but this was different. Maybe it was because Jonghyun was the leader of our group, and we were going to debut, if we were lucky and management greenlit us, in another year. Somehow, we were going to be different.

I took our bags up to my room, where we would be staying, and Jonghyun got the house tour. I met him and my father in the living room, where my father was explaining to Jonghyun, not without a note of boasting in his voice, that our new flat-screen TV was as flat as they could come those days.  
  
One afternoon, Jonghyun and I were sitting in the living room. On the sofa, watching TV. We were alone. It was the kind of cloudy, dark summer afternoon that couldn’t decide if it wanted to rain or not. Since it was nearing twilight, the room was only lit with the glow of the television.

“Do you think,” he said after an episode of something featuring Gundams ended, “that we’ll ever see giant robots while we’re alive?”

I was lying on the couch, watching the TV—and the back of his head—from the corner of my eye. I mulled it over for a while. If we could build skyscrapers and we could build things that moved, how hard would it be to build skyscrapers that moved? “I think so.”

“I wouldn’t want to be caught in the middle of a fight, though.”

“You're right. You’d want to be inside a giant robot if that happens.”

Jonghyun was quiet for a while. “Have you ever wondered what it would be like to do something else?”

I stand up and pick up the DVD cover on the coffee table. It was too dark to read what was written on it. Sujin had once asked me the same question, when I had told her and my parents that I wanted to be a singer. The answer I gave didn’t satisfy her, but for me it was the only real answer.

My explanation to Jonghyun seemed to go on forever. I’m not sure that it was very coherent or logical, but it was the best answer I could give. He gazed at me steadily as I talked. Something about his expression pulled people in, a very calming feeling. I could catch a glimpse deep within his eyes of a faint light, like a tiny candle flickering in a dark, narrow room.

“I think I get it,” he said in a quiet voice.

“Really?”

“Maybe,” he said. His hand, which had been twisting in with the other one as he thought about the future, he now placed on his neck. I stared vacantly as his fingers kneaded circles into where his neck met his shoulder. There was something intricate about it, about the rhythmic movement, the knot of muscle there, the invisible pain he was working through. I closed my eyes, and in the darkness, clouds floated before me.

Before he even spoke, I could see it. A flash of something. But as soon as I tried to grasp it, to tell him what I had seen, it was gone.

I opened my eyes. Jonghyun‘s fingers had stilled behind his neck. His head was bowed forward, as if deep in thought. Somewhere deep inside my body I felt an exquisitely sweet ache. Like I was here before, and I’d be here again.

I didn’t mean that it was the last time that Jonghyun visited. He’d be back time and time again. For some reason he didn’t like going up to Gangwon-do as much as he liked coming to Busan. His father, I learned, was strict, and they had a hard time getting along when Jonghyun was growing up. My family, on the other hand, was much more easy-going. They liked Jonghyun a lot. Each time, my mother commented on how lucky I was to have a close friend at the company. Jonghyun’s impeccable behavior as a houseguest from his willingness to help out with house chores and how sincerely he greeted my parents engendered no complaint. “You two are just like brothers,” she’d say, and bring us cold juice in chilled cups as we settled in front of the TV.

Brothers. To be honest, hearing that from her made me feel resentful. It wasn’t like that, I wanted to say, but back then I had no other way to say it.

  
#

  
For those of you who don’t know, four of us, excluding Aaron-hyung, entered Produce 101, a music survival show, for one last bid in the entertainment industry. Despite debuting well in 2012, we hadn’t been able to enjoy success for almost five years. Our records didn’t sell well, and we weren’t getting any new fans. We were doing as a beached fish in the middle of a desert summer.

I ended up placing ninth, therefore securing my spot in the temporary boy group that was the prize for those who placed in the top eleven spots. This meant I had to leave my members for a little while. And while I enjoyed my time with the members of Wanna One, it was Minki who pointed out that my laugh sounded different on TV back in those days. We sang upbeat songs, but it was the furthest thing from what I was actually feeling. If anyone just looked at those videos, they would be able to tell that I wasn’t a good actor.

The group, called Wanna One, disbanded after one year and a half, at the beginning of January 2019. Not that it was so quick and easy like that. There were tears, because the eleven of us had become very close. But as it was happening, both emotionally and contractually, I could feel myself moving from the inside. I was sewing the loose ends shut, filling gaps, reshaping myself a little, like a doll that was being cleaned and refurbished with new stuffing and yawn. Each day was a stitch in the fabric that was me, knitting me whole.

By the time Nu’est released our first single back together again as five, I was feeling full to the point of bursting. In that last year and a half I had kept some part of me tucked away and hidden, and now, like a starving man making up for all the meals he hadn’t eaten, I was gluttonous, insatiable, demanding, possessive, and nothing had felt better in my life.

Poor Jonghyun, who had to bear the brunt of it.  
  


#

  
During the first phase of my integration back into the group, both Jonghyun and I were fixated on keeping space from one another. _Just in case._

Space. It was something so out of reach, as luxurious as the name brand clothes we’d see other bands wearing, as far out of reach as the sponsorships we thought would come our way. We used to fight about the mess or who should have what, but over time we became close, like brothers. Lack of space was what defined us, rather than independence from each other. So it came as a shock to me that our company was going to sponsor apartments for us—if we wanted them. And what surprised me even more was _that_ I wanted a space of my own.

After living in the Wanna One dorms for a while, I guess I wanted to try it. For one reason or another, it felt like a natural evolution—an old time was ending, a new time was beginning. Dongho and Aaron were keen to live on their own too. We conferred over Kakao as to which apartment complexes were better. Dongho picked the furthest location, which was surprising, given how many late nights he’d be spending in the studio with Bumzu. But he liked the commute in, liked the view from the car as it peeled over the bridge across the river, how Gangnam came into view, rolled out under him early in the morning. Aaron-hyung picked a complex with a swimming pool, onsite dog-walkers, and a parking garage for his new Series E BMW.

I picked an apartment with a good view, a spacious living room, and that was closest to the office. For some reason, even though I wanted to try this new thing called independence, I still couldn’t get very far. And maybe there was an ulterior motive to it, too, though at that time I didn’t want to think about it too much.

The Pledis lease didn’t officially end until the following year, so Minki and Jonghyun still opted to live in the old apartment. There was no rush to move out, they told us, and for one, they’d like to see how we did first. So Aaron, Dongho, and I would be bachelors living in the big city, and Minki and Jonghyun would be housemates. I tried not to read too much into it _just in case_ and instead focused on my own move and settling into my new apartment, which I furnished with hinoki furniture and white curtains.

For one, there was the possibility that his feelings had changed. We had started something before I left. Produce 101, the break in between, had triggered something in both of us that had been long dormant. On the day before I moved into the Wanna One dorms, he had told me, in so many words, _I’ll see you later._

So _see you later_ was what I had to go on for over a year. We hadn’t touched since then, we hadn’t kissed, we hadn’t anything. We had talked on the phone and texted each other and I would take it on faith and evidence both: from the tone of his voice I could tell how much he missed me. At least, he knew how I felt.

And now that we were here, at _later,_ him so close every day that I could touch him, envelop him, devour him, it made him feel further away than ever. Some part of me wanted to despair, but I kept it calm. A quick change of heart wouldn’t be like Jonghyun at all. Likely, he was just talking to himself, thinking things through, waiting for the right time. And to be honest, so was I.

Our first few variety appearances together and VLives were strained. We were both bad actors, as any LOVE knows. And any LOVE would have been able to tell that we weren’t quite comfortable with being the five of us again, yet. But despite how I might have looked or how tense I might have seemed, I was happy. I tried to act the same as before, so as to reassure Jonghyun and the rest of the members that I was still the same old Minhyun.

There were days when I wanted to just reach out and hold his hand. Bring it to my mouth, kiss each of his knuckles until he blushed. Maybe back in the day, when nobody knew us, I would have been able to and nobody would have cared or noticed. Maybe we would have turned to each other right away. But our real reunion wasn’t so dramatic. For a while I couldn’t meet his eyes and he couldn’t meet mine. No surprise: these days there were cameras, security, and fans everywhere. The control of our environment in the wake of our reunion felt like a stone wall around us, impenetrable if looked at straight on.

But trust the process, I told myself, because blocks like these—in singing, in songwriting, in life—aren’t permanent objects. In the face of a block, all one can do is work through it steadily, like a gardener clearing away rocks in the soil.

Around the time that Dongho and Bumzu were finishing the last two songs of *Happily Ever After*, some crack in this impenetrable block appeared, and I was able to step through.  
  


#

  
It was my first time traveling business class outside of Asia, thanks to a new sponsorship from Moncler. The first few days were hectic in Milan before my manager and I adjourned to Prague to film _Universe_. There I met Yuliya, my love interest. Neither of our English was very good, and my Czech was nonexistent, as was her Korean. So beyond our interactions on camera, we didn’t speak much. All that said, it was easy to act opposite her because she got into character very easily and had learned the melody of the song, singing along. It helped calm my nervousness, and we’d often hum together.

Yuliya was accompanied by her boyfriend, Prakesh, who was one of the video editors. He watched me with a barely-concealed glare as we enacted our scenes, and he and Yuliya and would fool around in between takes, which embarrassed some of our company staff. The casting director kept apologizing to me for the inconvenience, but actually I thought it fascinating.

One day, I went to fetch Yuliya in the dressing room only to find her and Prakesh tangled on the couch. Neither of them were wearing their trousers.

“Get the fuck out of here,” Prakesh said rather rudely.

In situations like these, honesty is required, and when neither of you speak the same language fluently you need to be kind of heavy-handed to get your point across.

“I know you don’t like me,” I said to Prakesh. “But I am someone special. So don’t worry.”

Yuliya collapsed over Prakesh in giggles, which further immobilized him. I reconsidered what I said.

“Excuse me. I _have_ someone special. And Yuliya, please, it is time for next take. Thank you.” I said this all in a professional tone and tried not to look at the intersection where their legs met.

It really was the case that in other parts of the world, you could be free to express your love. How naturally they acted, how easy they were, that they could take these things for granted! My heart squeezed and ached. I think it was jealousy, sadness, and excitement all mixed into one steaming pot, like army stew.

It was in this state that I filmed a scene that didn’t make it into the final cut. In the shot, I am leaned over the balcony, cross-armed, and the camera advances on my face as I look into the distance. On the rooftop of the next building over, there was a row of air conditioning turrets. A flock of glossy crows that settled there and the brisk wind that caressed the side of the building made me think of Jonghyun’s hair and how it would cover his face when he was embarrassed. Made me think of the way I would, if he were there, stare at the soft edges of it against the hazy glow of Prague at golden hour. He’d turn to me and, leaning into my shoulder in that way he always had when he just couldn’t help himself anymore, in that low raspy voice of his with his mouth parted and the tip of his tongue just barely visible, _it’s pretty, isn’t it._

I would tilt his chin up and lean in and just when he couldn’t take it anymore, right when his remarkable self-control reached its tipping point, I’d kiss him. I’d kiss him until his breath went wild, until his embarrassment burned away.

Something about my face wasn’t quite right in that scene, so it didn’t go into the final cut of the music video. But that moment stayed with me all the way to the plane back to Seoul, and the lyrics for my part in _A Song for You_ came to me as we flew over the Caspian Sea.  
  


#

  
_Listen to my song, and you’ll know everything_  
This song is a record  
Of all the things I wish were true

  
#

  
When I landed in Incheon, there was a text message from Jonghyun.

 _Welcome back,_ it said. _You must be hungry._

 _I am_ , I replied.

_Let’s meet?_

_Where?_

_Arrivals Hall?_

I looked up. Jonghyun was smiling, sheepish. He had his cap on tight and his face mask pulled up. His eyes were crinkled up tight, and just like that, I was home.

We were both starved, both barely looking at each other, something fierce about the way we scarfed down McDonalds. It was a kind of indulgence by proxy, I realized, when I caught him looking at me through his fringe. I licked the salt off my fingers and set my toes on top of his under the table just lightly enough so it could be an accident, if he wanted it to be.

But Jonghyun jolted forward and a flush rode high on his cheekbones and then I knew he’d been waiting for me in a way that wasn’t just letting one day pass by another. Heat pooled low in my belly, like satisfaction, like _I told you so._ And for tonight it would be enough. What toes on top of toes could do was worthy of being savored for what it was for as long as it could be savored for.

Jonghyun took a deep breath as if to reset. Then in a more or less normal tone of voice he filled me in on what had happened recently with the group, with the company, with his family, on and on he went. But at the clip he talked it was like he didn’t want to stop talking and neither did I so we chattered in low voices in the taxi on the way back and he helped me carry my suitcases up to my flat and I invited him in and made us tea and we talked until the sky began to lighten.

“What are we, sixteen?” Jonghyun said happily, sleepy, head nestled on his arm as he struggled to keep his eyes open, heavy-lidded. I don’t remember whose eyes closed first.

We woke up on the rug mid-day. Both sporting bedheads, he finally took his leave with a dazed grumble.

As I brushed my teeth, I wondered if I’d entered some new dimension. Maybe it was just jet lag.  
  
  



	3. Kang Dongho

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dongho grimaces. “It's not my place to tell them what to do.” _Or how to do it. Nope, definitely not that._

  
  
  


“Hey, Dongho.”

“What?”

“...Never mind.”

Minhyun has been full of starts and stops like this for the last few months. At first, Dongho thought it was just because, like a squeaky engine, Minhyun was just trying to integrate back with the group again. But they’ve recorded a full mini-album, filmed a music video, and had countless dance practices together. The engine should be running smoothly by now. Not that a little hiccup like this matters much.

“Actually...”

“What?”

The closer Dongho looks at Minhyun’s expression, the further away it gets. “...Never mind.”

“Well, if you don’t know what you’re going to say, then just don’t.” Dongho withholds a grumble, but just barely.

“I know what I’m going to say,” Minhyun whines. “I just don’t want to say it to you.”

“Well why do you keep almost saying it to me, then?”

“Because,” Minhyun says, “I want to say it to you.”

“Seriously,” Dongho is exasperated now. “I’m trying to work on this. If you’re not going to just sit there and cooperate, you shouldn’t have kicked Bumzu out.”

“I didn’t kick him out,” Minhyun says petulantly. “He offered to pick up food. Plus, I wanted to talk to you.”

“Well talk, then.” Dongho spins around in the swivel chair to give Minhyun the full force of his annoyance. Minhyun, in petulant reply, continues to look spacey.

“I don’t wanna. You’re busy.”

“Oh my god.” Dongho rolls his eyes so hard he think they might fall out of the back of his head. “You’re a real handful.”

“That’s what he says, too.”

Minhyun probably hadn’t mean to say that aloud. But it’s too late. Dongho flips his hoodie up and pulls his cap down, partly to spite Minhyun, partly to cover his face. Why does Minhyun’s private business have to make Dongho’s ears red?

Whatever. He’ll just ignore Minhyun until Minhyun’s ready. If only he could get this hook to work. It started this morning and now it’s well after lunch and he’s riding the gurgle of his hunger into a dark place: Bumzu’s new sound palette, a group of juicy pop synths taken from 1960s Motown and 1980s pidgin digital — too aggressively stylized and future-forward for Nu’est’s sound, but it might work for Fromis 9. But the hook isn’t catching, and Dongho wonders if it’s the instrumental palette. The high tones and the bass don’t match, and the effect is the sound of a mosquito buzzing around a tuba.

The dissonance isn’t fair to blame it on a man who’s not around to defend himself, but Dongho doesn’t really feel like being selfless. He’s hungry, which means he’s cranky, and if he's being honest, he also shooed Bumzu out of the recording studio when Minhyun had poked his head in. After all, it’d been a long time Minhyun and Dongho had just hung out, the two of them. Not just because Minhyun had been gone for a year and a half, but because recently Minhyun was very busy with his own sponsorships and photoshoots and filming. Minhyun had only gotten back from Prague recently, too, and beyond a general update to the group, he hadn’t even told Dongho about the good parts—for one, were Eastern European women really more beautiful than regular European women?

Dongho misses his friend. But his friend is up in the clouds. And these days, he’s flying higher than ever.

“It’s about Jonghyun, isn’t it,” Dongho says, the same time that Minhyun wonders, as softly as a puff of cumulus twenty thousand feet in the air—“I wonder what Jonghyun is up to?”  
  


#

  
It wasn’t as if Dongho hadn’t been in a similar situation himself, once upon a year and a half ago. But it had been dangerous, and Dongho didn't trust himself, and that’s why he was focused almost exclusively on music these days. You could say that for Dongho, it was the preferred relationship.

For those who work with music, music has its own mind. It wants to go places on its own, and sometimes it’s stubborn and doesn’t want to go anywhere at all. Different producers had different ways to get the music out and into real life. While producers like Bumzu could coax a tune out of a water bottle, and while Woozi could milk melodies from thin air, Dongho’s approach was to block and tackle melodies and harmonies into submission. Maybe it was a relic of muscle memory leftover from his kumdo days, but he could trust that blocking and slashing would lead to some kind of outcome, some kind of resolution back into the tonic, a final five-one chord. At least with this technique you could get the kind of predictable and comforting ending that makes listeners sigh with mild relief, “ah, I’m glad the song didn’t leave me hanging.”

Dongho isn’t under any kind of illusion—he knows that kind of music doesn’t win the awards, and at best is featured in a soap opera’s final scene. It’s not very glamorous, and some of the moves are predictable, but it can hook you all the same. Sometimes, when you’re in close quarters, it’s all you can do.

Dongho can’t blame Minhyun and Jonghyun’s situation on close quarters or tunnel vision, even if Minhyun sounds blind to the sound of his own infatuation. But it’s the kind of myopia that’s based in absolute conviction, and that alone makes it hard to disagree with. Minhyun loving Jonghyun. Nothing could be more natural. A five-to-one ease back into the tonic key. And yet...

“That metaphor might be a stretch,” Bumzu says, pausing in the middle of slurping his noodles. “I don’t think I could get a water bottle to sing.”

“I think you could,” Dongho says.

“Hm,” Bumzu intones, sounding about as wise as a sage could sound if he were also inhaling ramyeon and spam with the quiet hunger of a man stationed abroad coming home from his tour of duty for the first time in four years. They slurp for a while longer in silence, until Dongho’s fingers itch forward to snap on the speakers. He plays the sample back a few times, fiddling with the levels to show Bumzu the discrepancy between the high and mid tones.

“Something doesn't fit, right? Looked into it while you were out—it’s not an issue with the melody. It’s something with the instruments. I want the transition from the chorus to the bridge to be clean. But if I changed the sound here, say to this, then I just feel like we’d have to go back and replace the rest of the sound, and that’d be a huge pain. See what I mean?”

Dongho looks over and realizes that Bumzu has just been staring quietly into his styrofoam bowl of noodles. “What’s wrong?”

“Is it going to make it difficult?”

“I mean, yeah, that’s what I’ve saying. You could have picked different textures for me to work with.”

“Not the soundscaspe, _pabo_. Minhyun. And Jonghyun.”

Dongho pulls his hood even tighter over his head and lets out a little groan.  
  


#  
  


It wasn’t so many years ago when you looked at the big scheme of things, but three years felt like a pretty significant chunk of time when you’d only lived for eighteen years. So it was hard for Dongho to see how life could have been any other way other than the way it was. There were certain facets in life as certain as the sky being blue and Jeju being famous for volcanic facial products, some of them being: Kang Dongho was the third member of Nu’est by age, Kang Dongho was the main vocalist, and Hwang Minhyun had always, always liked Kim Jonghyun the best.

Which was weird, because Minhyun had told him over and over again that Dongho was his best friend. So it had never occurred to Dongho to be jealous, although there was one incident which left him wistful and confused and he couldn’t understand why until he got a little older himself and had his own heart broken (which, by the way, was not because of any one person but was entirely due to not being able to sing due to vocal chord surgery that left him with almost a neurotic fear of never being able to sing ever again).

But back before his vocal chords became inflamed, they used to cool down after practice at the local 7-11, running out to get the kind of ice cream melon bars wrapped in bright green cellophane. They’d pull back the top of the enormous freezer big enough to fit a man inside and fish around half for flavor and half for the sheer joy of the icebox itself until the cold smoke stopped billowing around them and the shop manager threw them dirty looks for what would be extra on his electric bill. And one day it was the three of them, Minki and Aaron back in the studio cold passed out on the floor under the damp gush of spluttering A/C, begging for delivery which Minhyun gamely offered to service.

They’d finished their ice creams before they made it back to Pledis—Dongho one delicious bite at a time, Minhyun in a way where every bite was savored as if it were a fine meal at a foreign restaurant, Jonghyun in tiny, efficient bites.

“Minhyunnie,” Jonghyun said, and the way he said it was so warm and curious that shivers of embarrassment cascaded down Dongho’s spine, which he ignored in favor of More Ice Cream, “why do you eat your ice cream bar like that?”

Minhyun looked up, bait taken. “Like what?”

“Like every bite is supposed to make the next bite perfect?”

Minhyun was two bites away from done. With a swipe of his tongue he rounded off a raw edge and proferred the penultimate morsel to Jonghyun; and Jonghyun took it as obediently as a cat to milk. The smile on Minhyun’s face lingered long after they got back to the studio.

It was a moment that was easy to ignore; the kind of moment that blink and you’d miss it, and yet something about it stuck with Dongho, because he’d never been in love with anything else except singing, except music, and something was similar. Songwriting, if it were alive, which it felt like it was when he was deep in the zone, enthralled him in its call-and-response, would tease him through its bridges as it was being born from his mind and sometimes would even tease him coquettishly, when it was hiding its next refrain— _so, what happens next?_

No human being had looked at him with that kind of anticipation before, but there it was, naked on both Minhyun and Jonghyun’s faces, sticky with sweat from dancing and summer and the exuberance of ice cream on a hot day, and Dongho had seen it at the age of eighteen and had never been able to unsee it since.

How embarrassing. Not just the incident, but how Dongho had zero idea how to handle himself then, and how to handle it now. He’d turned his back and he’d closed his eyes and he’d let his brain freeze and told himself maybe it’d go away.  
  


#

  
“Minhyun,” Dongho says, and there, this is it. There’s no turning back from this. “What are you guys going to do?”

“What do you mean,” Minhyun says.

“Are you guys, gonna, well, get together or something? Move in? Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it.” There’s no need, obviously to mention who the “he” was, and who the “you guys” were. The full red picture was riding high on Minhyun’s cheeks was his answer.

“Well, he’s living with Minki.”

“But that’s just for now. So what are you guys gonna do?”

Minhyun swallows. “What do you think we should do?”

“Beats me,” Dongho says.

“And for the record, nothing’s happened. Yet.”

Dongho feels his hairline jump back five millimeters in surprise. “What?” He’d have thought that they’d be—all over each other isn’t the right set of words, but it’s the only set of words. Dongho resists the urge to bury his face in his hands, tries to endure his embarrassment of thinking of the two of them—like that—like a man. Which was like trying to imagine his parents not doing it.

Well, great. Now he’s imagining his parents doing it.

“We haven’t even touched since I came back.” And Minhyun sounds wistful. Dongho grits his teeth. What would a friend do? How far would a friend inquire? “To be honest,” Minhyun continues, “I’m not sure what’s happening. Or going to happen. We haven’t—really talked about it yet.”

“Maybe he’s trying to be careful.”

Minhyun laughs quietly. “I hope so. Though it’s hard to feel careful.”

“Whoa, okay, that’s enough. I don’t need to know everything.”

“Okay.”

“But,” Dongho takes a breath. “You should tell me if you’re having trouble.”

Minhyun scrubs at his face. He does look tired. “I don’t want to put Nu’est in a bad spot. And the last thing I want is a scandal, but,”

“But?”

“But I really, really, really,” each word gets progressively louder, “really, _really, really like him._ ” And on the last word, Minhyun bursts out laughing, almost maniacal in tenor, it leaves Dongho’s hair standing on the back of his neck and the goosebumps rise from his arms, because Minhyun sounds crazed, really warped.

“Well,” Dongho says, “I guess that makes two of you.”  
  
“What am I going to do, Dongho?” And he sounds lost but there’s a dazed smile on his face, like what Dongho said couldn’t have made him any happier.  
  


#

  
“So what’d you tell him?” Bumzu asks.

“Nothing,” Dongho says. “It's not my place to tell them what to do.” _Or how to do it. Nope, definitely not that._

“Hm.”

“Yeah, sure. It might be hard. But they’re not idiots. Even if they act like idiots, they’re not stupid.”

“You sure about that?”

“Well,” Dongho says with a smile, and they leave it at that.  
  
  
  
  



	4. Kim Jonghyun

“Nice,” the voice crackles over the intercom. “I think we got it, Jonghyun.” On the other side of the studio glass, Bumzu, Dongho, and Minhyun give him thumbs ups.

Jonghyun hangs up the Sennheisers carefully on their pedestal, and emerges from the studio. “You really wanted to keep me in there, didn’t you.”

“Maybe it’s because your style has changed a little?” Dongho teases, and plays the sample back for them.

“I’m still the same,” Jonghyun says quickly, mostly to get Dongho to turn it off. Yes, he’s a recording artist, but he still doesn’t _actually_ like the sound of his own voice replayed back at him. It usually takes him a few days in between recordings to get used to the sound of his own voice—by then, he’ll have listened to it enough times that it begins to take on an otherworldly quality, that it becomes abstracted and someone else’s.

Or maybe some part of him is reassuring Minhyun, who is sitting on the couch, fixating him with a wide-eyed gaze. “It was really good, Jonghyun-ah.” The way he says it sounds cool enough to the untrained ear, but Jonghyun can sense the breathiness in Minhyun’s voice that makes his compliment just shy of adulation. He looks away before his ears can go hot.

Now that they have everyone’s parts in, Bumzu promises to send the first cut tomorrow. His fingers are already moving even though he’s not looking at the screen; Jonghyun can hear the muffled sound of the track from his headphones, his own raspy rap coming through tinny.

“Should we get something to eat?” Dongho’s wide-eyed and keen, about to rise from his chair. They all know what Dongho means; knife cut noodles from the joint two blocks down from Pledis, where the owner knows their names, followed by a wild spree at the bakery across the street, and enough pastries to last them for the next few mornings. It’s coming to dinner time, after all.

“I recall _somebody_ saying,” Bumzu intones, without lifting his head from his computer, “that _somebody_ wanted to get ripped by his first comeback with Minhyun?”

Dongho’s grinds his teeth. “Then _maybe_ I’ll join for dinner later,” he mutters. “Apparently Bumzu and I have work to do.”

“You kids have fun,” Bumzu says stoically. With a quiet laugh inflected with relief and some nerves, Jonghyun says to Minhyun, “guess it’s just us, then.” He hopes Minhyun can’t hear it, but Minhyun’s already halfway out the door, coat on, calling out for him to hurry up, he’s _starved_.

Outside, the February air hits them like a surprise, tingling and refreshed. Jonghyun thinks it must be colder than usual, but it might because he feels warmer than usual. They wave off the chauffeur—Jonghyun says that they’re just heading down for dinner down the street at the noodle joint—but when they’re supposed to cross the road they don’t, and they keep going and going until they end up at Bongeunsa Temple, where the Lunar New Year’s festival is in full swing.

“We might get caught,” Minhyun says, nose wonderfully pink and shiny. Jonghyun bristles a little bit.

“Shall we?”

“Shall we what?”

Jonghyun doesn’t reply, just zips Minhyun’s puffer coat up to his nose and pulls down his beanie, Minhyun’s laugh puffs through the down material in a dissipated cloud as his eyes go half-moon, delighted.

Jonghyun zips his puffer all the way up to match. “Let’s go,” he says.

The sun is setting and in the haze of golden hour in the cold winter light it’s hard to make out the contrast of any individual’s features, plus people are with their families and loved ones, while others are old enough not to recognize them or care. Minhyun buys Jonghyun deep-fried _yakwa_ cakes and Jonghyun buys Minhyun fried chicken and they pass through the main temple under the criss-crossing stream of paper wishes strung up above the lotus plants, worming their way through the bulging crowd of merrymakers to the back lanes of the temple grounds. Up a trail into the hills and away from the merrymaking, they duck into the shadow of a worn-down pagoda to watch the crowds of merrymakers from afar as the sun sets for the day.

“Dongho would have liked this,” Jonghyun says, offering Minhyun the last bite of fried chicken.

“You think?”

“Yeah.”

“Was it bad that we left him behind?”

“Technically, he did need to help Bumzu if we’re going to review the first draft by tomorrow. But I guess.” Jonghyun looks a little glum, furrowed brow evident.

Minhyun looks up, suddenly startled.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Minhyun says. “But I think they know.”

“They know?” Jonghyun wants to ask, but he doesn’t want to jump to conclusions.

“I’m pretty sure they know.” And Minhyun’s voice is oddly deadpan, as if he’s snuffed out all the emotion and fear, leaving behind only a wave of pure logic. “My lyrics for our single were originally about you. Bumzu heard everything.”

“Milano Hwang’s love confessions at ten thousand feet in the air.” Jonghyun watches the moon climb up high in the sky—full, voluptuous, ascending, hanging like a lens in the middle of an azure sky quickly darkening navy.

“ _Come fly with me_ ,” Minhyun sings softly, his breath tickling Jonghyun’s ear. “ _Come fly, come fly away._ ” And the way he pauses after that, the way his breath stutters in his throat, brings Jonghyun to the edge of his toes, waiting for a plunge.

“Minhyun—”

“Jonghyun. I’ve missed you.”

“Me too,” Jonghyun says, and his face flames pleasantly at the admission.

“But I know, I know,” Minhyun interjects quickly, and steps back. “We have to be careful, right?” His hands are shoved deep in his pockets, like he’s trying to burrow away. Jonghyun, something pulled out of him desperate, suddenly unthinking and impulsive, shakes him to his core. In a flash Jonghyun’s hands dart out and envelop Minhyun’s hands in his, pressing Minhyun’s knuckles to his lips, eyes locked deep. Minhyun leans in and captures his lips and Jonghyun in an astounding loss of control opens his mouth to let Minhyun’s tongue slip in, electric—

“No, wait,” Jonghyun steps back, hands on his lips, eyes darting left and right.

“Jonghyun, _please_ —”

He can see Minhyun trying so hard to hold back. Minhyun’s whole body is pitched forward, yearning, straining, and Jonghyun can feel his own too, gravitating toward Minhyun like the earth to the full moon, like the tide rising. And he’s trying very hard not to kiss Minhyun again, and thinks about anything, thinks about how cold it is, how he can’t feel his toes, how everything is just one, big, electric dream around them, and god _damn_ he wants to be kissed again, to just melt, to surrender—

“You’re going to make me wait until the end of time, aren’t you.”

Minhyun’s cool tone of voice and breathy, aristocratic laugh is his go-to when he’s acting. It’s shaky and his expression is at odds with his tone of voice, but if there’s anything Minhyun is great at, it’s bending his voice to suit his reality. And it’s all just enough of a barrier between them that Jonghyun snaps back to reality.

“It won’t be that long,” Jonghyun promises. “We just need to—for one, find a better place to do this in, because there are all these people around and we smell like chicken and secondly, I think, we have to consider the other members—”

Minhyun interrupts him with a level gaze. “Jonghyun, did you know you’re really fetching when you’re shy?”

Jonghyun blusters. “I’m _not_ shy.”

“And you’re the cutest when you’re embarrassed.”

“Minhyun, I’m really not embarrassed,” Jonghyun says embarrassedly.

“So you really can’t blame me for liking you for as long as I have,” Minhyun says, aloof and warm all at once, and somehow making it sound like it is _Jonghyun’s fault_ and Minhyun is _just tolerating it_.  
  
“It’s not my fault,” Jonghyun says, watching helplessly as Minhyun assembles his aristocratic mask piece by piece, puts himself neatly in order, slips into a well-worn shell that’s meant for everyone else Jonghyun finds himself wanting, _wanting_ so bad, to break the princely facade and just dig into Minhyun’s soul until Minhyun’s writhing beneath him and begging, begging prettily just like he was before, _Jonghyun, please_ —

“Come on then,” Minhyun calls out to him, already halfway down the hill, and Jonghyun is left to scamper down, all the while praying his feet don’t slip on the worn stone path.  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <3 
> 
> @_radishface on Twitter

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading... I’m so happy the boys are all together again and that they’re doing so well. 
> 
> As for this story—just me delving into what I think has happened behind the scenes, obviously with a pair of rose-colored, 2hyun-tinted glasses on (not that they’ve made it very hard. The way they promenade their love around the block almost makes me mad). 
> 
> Leave me a little note letting me know what you thought—I always appreciate the gesture, and it’ll help to keep my motivation high and the story coming. <3 Nu’est OT5 FTW!


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